New Photos Show Blazingly Bright Uranus & Neptune in Infrared

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The distant "ice giant" planets Uranus and Neptune look like
worlds aflame in new photos captured by Hawaii's Keck
Observatory.

To the naked eye, Neptune would appear blue and Uranus
bluish-green. But
Caltech astronomer Mike Brown snapped the new pictures in
infrared light, using Keck's adaptive optics system. So the two
planets blaze reddish-orange, like embers glowing in the dark
night of deep space.

Brown posted the pictures via Twitter from Sept. 18 to Sept. 20.
Two shots show bright streaks on Neptune, which is about 17 times
as massive as Earth and orbits 30 times farther from the sun than
our planet does. [ See
the stunning photos of Neptune and Uranus ]

These streaks represent high-altitude clouds that are reflecting
a lot of light. Neptune is a stormy place, hosting some of the
most violent maelstroms in the solar system.

Neptune and Triton

One image captures Neptune along with its largest moon, Triton,
which is about 80 percent as big as Earth's moon.

Brown studies objects in the frigid outer reaches of the solar
system, both in the Kuiper Belt and beyond. He has discovered a
number of dwarf planets way out there, including the Pluto-size
Eris in 2005 — a find that spurred astronomers to rethink just
what a planet is (and, ultimately, to demote Pluto to " dwarf
planet " status in 2006).

During the recent Keck observing session, Brown and his team were
more interested in Triton than Neptune.

"We were studying Triton at the time, trying to see if we could
make a crude map of its surface composition," Brown told
SPACE.com in an email. "But Neptune is a little too spectacular
to not stop and take a picture of it as long as you're nearby."

"The rings are faint and really tough to see and not even
discovered until moderately recently, but Uranus is so dark at
these wavelengths that the rings are quite easy to see," Brown
said.

One Uranus image shows several of the planet's 27 known moons,
including one known as Miranda, which blazes bright above and to
the left of Uranus. Despite being just one-seventh as big as
Earth's moon, Miranda boasts canyons 12 times deeper than the
Grand Canyon, as well as numerous other interesting geological
features.

Again, the moon drew Brown's attention more than the planet.

"Here we were looking at Miranda, which is quite close to
Uranus," Brown said. "But, again, we couldn't resist the photo
opportunity."

Also visible in the photo is another, fainter moon, Puck, to
Uranus' upper right. The bright spots on the planet's disk are
high clouds, Brown said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on
Twitter:@michaeldwall.
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